Travel time and mileage as a self-employed carer

The government's guidance on which working hours the minimum wage must be paid for uses a care worker as its own example. Travelling from one work assignment to another counts as working time, and the example it gives is "a care worker driving from one client to another between appointments". Travel between home and work does not count. So an agency that pays only for the minutes spent in clients' homes can end up paying below the minimum wage once the driving is added in. The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026, and it has to be met across the whole of that working time.

If you are employed and that is happening to you, it is a pay complaint that goes to HMRC.

None of that applies once you work for yourself. The government's page on who gets the minimum wage lists "self-employed people running their own business" among those who are not entitled to it. Carers on PrimeCarers are self-employed: you set your own rate, choose your clients and decide how you work, and the contract for each booking is between you and the client. The flip side is that no rule pays you for the road between two clients. Your rate, and anything you agree with each client, has to do that job. What care workers are paid in the UK sets out the employed figures you are comparing yourself with, and the carer resources hub has the rest of the guides on pay, tax and finding work.

Read the bar from left to right and most of it is not green. The carer leaves home at 07:10 and gets back at 20:50, which is 13 hr 40 min away from home or tied to the diary. Five of those hours are paid. 2 hr 45 min are spent driving 54 miles, and the rest is waiting outside, sitting at home between calls, or parked up because the evening client is too far from home to go back.

At £20 an hour, the typical rate carers on PrimeCarers advertise with our fee included, the day brings in £100. Our 20% commission on hourly visits comes out of that, leaving £80. Divided by the five hours with clients, that is £16 an hour, which is the figure most carers have in their head. Divided by the 7 hr 45 min spent either with a client or driving, it is £10.32. Take off what the miles cost to run the car, valued at the 55p a mile flat rate HMRC uses, and it falls to £6.49 an hour before any tax.

The waiting time is not counted in either figure, and it is the part carers describe when they say they are out from early morning until ten at night and paid for four hours. Those gaps are hard to fill with anything useful, and they rarely come to mind when a carer sets a rate.

Charging for travel, by agreementSection titled Charging%20for%20travel%2C%20by%20agreement

The contract between you and each client lets you charge for travel only where you both agreed it in advance, and the agreement has to set out the rate and when it applies, in writing. In the chart, each client has agreed to pay the miles to reach them at 55p a mile, which takes the car cost off your side of the day and leaves £10.32 an hour. The hours on the road are still unpaid unless you agree a charge for time as well.

It works best where the reason is plain: a client well outside the area you usually cover, a rural address, or trips with the client in your car. Families reading what families are told about a carer's travel time and mileage are told that getting to their door is the carer's own journey unless they agree otherwise, and that travel between two families' visits is charged to neither. Expect the question, and have your reason ready.

Building travel into your hourly rateSection titled Building%20travel%20into%20your%20hourly%20rate

This is how most employers handle it: travel is a cost of the business and it sits inside the price. Raising the same day to £25 an hour lifts it to £9.07. To make every working hour on this spread-out day pay what a visit hour pays at £20, the rate would need to be about £31, above what carers on PrimeCarers typically advertise and close to the £28 to £35 an agency charges. A higher rate helps, but it cannot fix a day that is mostly road on its own. How much to charge as a self-employed carer goes through setting the rate itself.

Keeping clients close togetherSection titled Keeping%20clients%20close%20together

The same five visits within a few streets of each other, with 45 minutes of driving, pay £12.77 an hour at the ordinary rate. Nobody has to agree to anything. It means deciding how far you will go before you accept a booking, and saying no to the client on the far side of the county when your other clients are all in one town. Finding private clients covers building a list of clients near you rather than taking whatever comes.

When you know the rate and the area that work for you, you can register as a carer on PrimeCarers and set that rate on your profile, or see the carer jobs open near you to judge how far apart they are before you apply.

1. 1

   Raise it before the booking starts

   When you first talk to a family

   Travel is easiest to agree while a family is still deciding. Raised after the first invoice, it reads as a surprise charge, however fair it is.
2. 2

   Name the rate

   One line

   For mileage, 55p a mile is the usual figure, because it matches the rate HMRC sets for a car. For travel time, say whether it is charged at your hourly rate or a set amount per visit.
3. 3

   Say which journeys it covers

   The line that prevents arguments

   Getting to this client from home, the miles on trips with the client in your car, or both. Say how the miles are counted, for example by the route a map app gives.
4. 4

   Put it in writing on PrimeCarers

   Before the first journey

   Send it as a message to the client and keep it. A spoken agreement on the doorstep does not meet what the contract asks for.
5. 5

   Check each booking before it is invoiced

   Every week

   Invoices are compiled from what you and the client enter on the platform, and you are both responsible for checking a booking is right before it is invoiced.

Any travel charge you agree is paid through PrimeCarers with the rest of the booking. The carer terms require every payment for work with a client you met through PrimeCarers to go through the platform, so never take travel money in cash or by bank transfer on the side, even for a small amount.

If a client queries a travel charge, go back to what you both wrote down. Where nothing was agreed in advance, the contract is clear that travel is not chargeable, and the fair thing is to take it off and agree it properly for the visits that follow. Where there is a disagreement about a booking, the contract leaves you and the client to settle it and update the booking; PrimeCarers can help the two of you talk but does not decide who is right.

The contract treats other out-of-pocket costs, such as buying shopping for a client, differently: they are reimbursed where the client agreed in advance and you give them a receipt, and travel is excluded from that clause. Allowable expenses for self-employed carers covers those costs and how they affect your tax.

On PrimeCarers the length of each visit is agreed between you and the client, not set by a rota. Our family guides explain to families why very short calls leave too little time for personal care, so what families are told about minimum visit length is worth reading before you talk to a family about how long their visits should be. A longer visit is often better care and a better use of your drive at the same time.

A single visit of six hours or more is charged at our lower commission rate of 15% rather than 20%. So a carer who advertises £18 an hour for a long shift keeps £15.30 of each hour, and has one journey there and one back instead of several in between. What carers earn on PrimeCarers shows a week of long shifts next to a week of shorter visits. Live-in work raises travel differently again, as one long journey at each changeover, and live-in carer pay covers it from your side, while what families are told about live-in travel shows what the family has read.

The insurance is where carers most often get caught out, and it is covered in full elsewhere. What car insurance do I need as a home carer? explains which class of cover to ask for, and carers, cars and insurance is the same subject as families see it. Read one of them before you agree to drive anybody.

Once the car is in the picture, keep a simple log of every business journey: the date, where from and to, the miles and which client it was for. It is the record that backs up any mileage you charge a client, and it is what you will need at the end of the year for your tax. How to pay tax as a self-employed carer goes through the return itself.